Signifying Trauma in the Post-9/11 Combat Film: The Hurt Locker and In the Valley of Elah

Abstract

Since the events of 11 September 2001, an extensive range of genres increasingly feature traumatized protagonists. However, there are acknowledged difficulties in trying to recreate the actual experience of trauma on screen [Walker, J. 2005. Trauma Cinema: Documenting Incest and the Holocaust. Berkeley and London: University of California Press]. Slavoj Žižek [2002. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. London and New York: Verso] explores this dilemma through an extension of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and places trauma in a category termed ‘the Real’ as a form that is resistant to symbolization. This article examines the signification of trauma in two post-9/11 combat films and considers how they enable an understanding of war trauma through the insertion of visuals which construct their respective narratives as traumatic memory, thereby bringing the viewer closer to Žižek’s concept of the traumatic Real.